Baseball Playoffs, Day 7

It's football season on the east coast. Down south the Braves have failed to heed Santayana's advice, while up north the runaway two largest payrolls in baseball have both been granted a few extra weeks' worth of offseason shopping. They might need the extra days, actually, since their professional shoppers might no longer be around.

So, what happened?

Pitching and defense, my friends, are what happened. Or, perhaps more accurately, pitching and defense are what didn't happen. Pitching didn't happen in the 8th and 9th innings of the Sunday Braves vs. Astros game, as Braves' savior closer Kyle Farnsworth relinquished a five-run lead in spectacular fashion. Maybe Farnsworth just wanted to secure his place in baseball lore as the man without whose failing the longest game in playoff history would never have occurred. And so the Astros avoided losing the game by mere inches in the bottom of the 9th and then avoided winning in the 10th by those same few inches. And so I—at Foxwoods for a day of poker—wandered away to play a ten-person poker tournament. I finished (poorly), wandered back to the TVs, and much to my shock arrived to catch the 17th and 18th innings. Home run Chris Burke and once again, it's so long Atlanta, we hardly knew ya.

(My mom once told me that if you don't have something mean to say about Roger Clemens, don't say anything at all, and so I'm not.)

And then the Yankees went and beat the Angels on Sunday, sending their ALDS series to a decisive Game 5. Sure the Red Sox and Braves had been knocked out, but all would be for naught should the Yankees start making deals with the devil once more. But Monday came, and for the Yankees, defense didn't happen. Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words.

Our reward? We get to read articles like this:

IN the end, the Mets had a better season than the Yankees. Yes, the Yankees won yet another division championship and the Mets only tied for third place in their division, but the Mets still had a better season.

So, things in the world of Major League Baseball have gone swimmingly in the past week, as is more than evident from my preferences:

1. St. Louis Cardinals: Won 3–0
2. San Diego Padres: Swept!
3. Chicago White Sox: Won 3–0
4. Houston Astros: Won 3–1
5. California Angels: Won 3–2
6. Boston Red Sox: Swept!
7. Atlanta Braves: Lost 3–1
8. New York Yankees: Lost 3–2

For a cumulative record of 12 and 3 and my preferred team winning each series. Now my lowly pawns, the Angels and Astros, become my enemies, and I will glad enjoy watching the ChiSox and the Cards stomp all over them. After all, if I can't see the Mets victorious, at least I can (occasionally) assert my view of the proper (baseball) order of things onto the (baseball) world around me.